"Mother was not at all astonished. She said there had been letters on the subject already, and that she had been rather expecting the company. 'But,' she added, 'they will pay well, and as Melissa is to be married at Christmas, ready money will be very needful.'
"About dark a carriage arrived. It contained two gentlemen and several large trunks. I had been watching for it behind the lilac trees and I saw that our afternoon visitor was now accompanied by a slight, very fair-man, dressed with extreme care in the very highest fashion. I saw also that he was handsome, and I was quite sure he must be rich, or no doctor would wait upon him so subserviently.
"This doctor I had disliked at first sight, and I soon began to imagine that I had good cause to hate him. His conduct to his patient I believed to be tyrannical and unkind. Some days he insisted that Mr. Compton was too ill to go out, though the poor gentleman begged for a walk; and again, mother said, he would take from him all his books, though he pleaded urgently for them.
"One afternoon the postman brought Dr. Orman a letter, which seemed to be important, for he asked father to drive him to the next town, and requested mother to see that Mr. Compton did not leave the house. I suppose it was not a right thing to do, but this handsome sick stranger, so hardly used, and so surrounded with mystery, had roused in me a sincere sympathy for his loneliness and suffering, and I walked through that part of the garden into which his windows looked. We had been politely requested to avoid it, 'because the sight of strangers increased Mr. Compton's nervous condition.' I did not believe this, and I determined to try the experiment.
"He was leaning out of the window, and a sadder face I never saw. I smiled and courtesied, and he immediately leaped the low sill, and came toward me. I stooped and began to tie up some fallen carnations; he stooped and helped me, saying all the while I know not what, only that it seemed to me the most beautiful language I ever heard. Then we walked up and down the long peach walk until I heard the rattle of father's wagon.
"After this we became quietly, almost secretly, as far as Dr. Orman was concerned, very great friends. Mother so thoroughly pitied Alfred, that she not only pretended oblivion of our friendship, but even promoted it in many ways; and in the course of time Dr. Orman began to recognize its value. I was requested to walk past Mr. Compton's windows and say 'Good morning' or offer him a flower or some ripe peaches, and finally to accompany the gentlemen in their short rambles in the neighborhood.
"I need not tell you how all this restricted intercourse ended. We were soon deeply in love with each other, and love ever finds out the way to make himself understood. We had many a five minutes' meeting no one knew of, and when these were impossible, a rose bush near his window hid for me the tenderest little love-letters. In fact, Julia, I found him irresistible; he was so handsome and gentle, and though he must have been thirty-five years old, yet, to my thinking, he looked handsomer than any younger man could have done.
"As the weeks passed on, the doctor seemed to have more confidence in us, or else his patient was more completely under control. They had much fewer quarrels, and Alfred and I walked in the garden, and even a little way up the hill without opposition or remark. I do not know how I received the idea, but I certainly did believe that Dr. Orman was keeping Alfred sick for some purpose of his own, and I determined to take the first opportunity of arousing Alfred's suspicions. So one evening, when we were walking alone, I asked him if he did not wish to see his relatives.
"He trembled violently, and seemed in the greatest distress, and only by the tenderest words could I soothe him, as, half sobbing, he declared that they were his bitterest enemies, and that Dr. Orman was the only friend he had in the world. Any further efforts I made to get at the secret of his life were equally fruitless, and only threw him into paroxysms of distress. During the month of August he was very ill, or at least Dr. Orman said so. I scarcely saw him, there were no letters in the rose bush, and frequently the disputes between the two men rose to a pitch which father seriously disliked.
"One hot day in September everyone was in the fields or orchard; only the doctor and Alfred and I were in the house. Early in the afternoon a boy came from the village with a letter to Dr. Orman, and he seemed very much perplexed, and at a loss how to act. At length he said, 'Miss Phoebe, I must go to the village for a couple of hours; I think Mr. Alfred will sleep until my return, but if not, will you try and amuse him?'